Peaceful co-existence, friendly takeover or hostile invasion?
Tuesday 13 November at 7:30pm
Library Meeting Room
Ground Floor
Reid Library Building
The University of Western Australia
Dr Robin Adamson
We look at some of the effects of English on the other four main languages of the European Union: French, German, Italian and Spanish, and at emerging attitudes to language in the EU. Are we facing an English-only future? And if we are, does it matter?
About the Speaker
Dr Robin Adamson graduated from the University of Queensland and then studied in Paris before taking up a position in the French Department at UWA in 1965. She moved to Scotland in 1967 and remained there until 2001, returning to UWA (European Languages and Studies) as an Honorary Research Fellow. She was for many years Director of the Centre for Applied Language Studies at the University of Dundee. She was Chair of the Scottish Universities French Language Research Association, set up the Dundee/St Andrews/ Aberdeen exchange with Grenoble and was a Consultant at the Scottish Centre for Language Teaching at the University of Stirling. Her research has been in contemporary French language: computer-assisted stylistics (Albert Camus, Paul Eluard), second language acquisition, communicative grammar, discourse analysis and language teaching methodology. She published ‘The Defence of French. A language in crisis?’ earlier this year. Developing some of the research for the book, she is now studying the influence of English on the other main languages of the European Union: French, German, Italian and Spanish.
Please note that the ground floor entrance to the Library, nearest to the carpark, will be open from 7.30pm - 7.45pm.
Members: Free Non-members: $5.00 donation
